


Though the heavens fall

by shelter



Series: Evenings without echoes [2]
Category: Claymore
Genre: F/F, Healing, Hope, Miria somewhat OOC, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 20:59:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7377175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-series. On a bright summer day, Miria stabs Yuma with her Claymore in a grove of olive trees on the outskirts of Rabona.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though the heavens fall

**Though the heavens fall**

(Rated T/M for graphic violence, disturbing imagery)

 

  
_“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey”_ \- Kenji Miyazawa

 

 

On a bright summer day, Miria stabs Yuma with her Claymore in a grove of olive trees on the outskirts of Rabona.

She drives the blade into the other warrior’s stomach, presses both body and blade into a tree. She pushes until the blade emerges from the other end of the trunk. When Yuma tries to stop her, she fires a punch into her face. Yuma’s teeth fall like diamonds.

Miria stands back. She breathes, her chest constricting from effort. She watches blood trail in vine-like spirals from the exit wound. The ruts of Yuma’s ribs flare and fall with effort, her nose bubbling blood. She tries in vain to free herself. But Miria has secured the hilt and twisted it tight.

What did I just do, Miria thinks, what did I just do? She stares at her hands, stares at Yuma – *

Yet Yuma still reaches out a rail-thin hand and says, “Miria – please – you’re hurting – you need – talk –”

As Yuma speaks, Miria sees the black shadow billow from her mouth and soak the ground with its inky slime. It consumes Yuma’s body and grows into a totem of hacked-apart warriors’ bodies.

“Miria,” it says. “Phantom Miria.”

Miria runs.

* * *

  
The next thing she remembers is dodging blades. The sun’s in her face. She beats her attacker aside, and injects enough yoki into her legs to phantom-sprint to a safe distance.

It’s been a long time she’s used her phantom speed. So she stumbles. Five warriors surround her, Claymores drawn. She knows them. Just can’t recall their names now. Leafless trees rise from behind them like gnawed bones. Triangles of sunshine light up the woods. The warriors shout. But her hearing has gone. All she can sense is the thump-thump-thump of her breath smashing around in the well of her chest.

She elbows one aside and knocks her down with the flat of her palm. She disarms another. Claymore in hand, she swipes at the third’s arm until it hangs by a hinge of sinew. The fourth loses seven fingers. The fifth retreats.

“Captain Miria!”

She looks up. The woods are filled with advancing warriors. She sees Audrey and Rachel, Dietrich and Raftela. They’re all shouting at her but she can’t hear them. Just mouths moving and spit flying.

She’ll fight them, she thinks. She’ll fight everyone. She can’t stop now. She has to escape.*

“Stand down, Captain Miria!”

Another voice: “Why did you let me die, Captain Miria?”

The voice comes from behind. She turns and expects to see –

Her attacker closes the gap so fast – so fast – that she only manages to nick her in the shoulder before she takes the full brunt of her knockout punch. Miria sees the sun-speckled forest bristling with falling leaves. And then nothing.

* * *

 

  
“Why don’t you tell me? Tell me so I can help you.”

“You think telling you would make things better?”

In the dark, Miria talks to herself. She tells herself that she has tried to put an end to her visions about five times ever since the war ended. At each time, she was interrupted. Twice by her dead comrade Tabitha; once when she had wandered far from home and saw lightning crown the mist-veiled mountains; once by Yuma; and once by the black shadow that held onto her hands as she got ready to put the sharp point of the blade into her chin.

The black shadow caressed her hands and spoke with the voices of people she killed. This is how she remembered Hysteria’s high-pitched laugh like a duck’s warble, or Rimuto’s throaty baritone.

“Please give me the honour, Phantom Miria,” it said, sounding like a husky, playful Hilda.

“No. You’re not real.”

“I’m as real as you.” This time it’s Veronica’s even-toned voice.

“Go to hell.”

“Where do you think you are?”

* * *

  
For as long as she can recall, Miria has been haunted by visions of the dead. They began after she had killed Hilda and peaked in the months following Priscilla’s defeat. She would relive the battle at Pieta or the final battle with Priscilla in her nightmares and wake to see Flora staring at her, her face shredded and unravelling into snakes. Or Tabitha torso-less in the moonlight, begging to die.

For a long time, she had shared these horrors with her seven closest comrades. But with no more battles to fight, the Ghosts were disbanded. Helen and Deneve were retracing their steps around the island. Clare had set out with Raki for a place to call home. Cynthia had chosen to marry a westerner and had left for his lands. Yuma stayed in Rabona. Tabitha was dead.

So she did what any victorious warrior would do. She built a home on the slopes of the hills outside Rabona, took the humans nearby under her wing and cultivated olive trees with them. It was a good pretext for watching for yoma and invaders.

On one particularly bad night, when she dreamt Jean had crawled into her bed and hung onto her as she bled dry, Miria walked into the olive groves and sat down. She called out Tabitha’s name, yelled that she was sorry and cried.

Then the black shadow walked up to her like a feral dog and said hello.

It embraced her like an old friend. In this incarnation, it had limbs that ended in human hands, a chopped-up tongue with bloody eyes. Its thumbs pushed at her throat. She screamed.

In the morning when she woke, she found she had bitten her own fingers off.

* * *

  
She wakes in the gaol. It’s the place she and the leaders helped establish in Rabona to detain deviant ex-warriors. They’ve stripped her down and wrapped her arms in chains.

She knows in the dark above there’s a false ceiling with studded with spears – a failsafe should the prisoner awaken. But it’s not necessary: Miria can taste the bitter ashes of yoki-suppressant pills in her mouth.

Above, metal slams against metal like a detonation.

“Have you calmed down yet, Miria?”

She knows Audrey’s voice, echoing down the chamber to her.

“How long?”

“Fourteen hours.”

“I mean how long will I be here?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether or not isolation will cure you of your disease.”

“It’s not a disease.”

“We’re not sure of that.”

“Ask Yuma. She was –”

Then, she remembers. She remembers the muscle memory of hands clenching, pushing the Claymore into her friend’s flesh.

“Is – is she –?”

“You’re not entitled to ask that question.”

“Audrey –”

“You know full well that killing a fellow sister is a capital crime,” Audrey says. “You wrote these laws yourself.”

“But – but –”

“I have nothing more to say to you.”

Audrey’s voice fades. Metal moves with a loud bang. Silence descends.

Miria tries to trace the walls of the gaol in the dark. The chains complain, pulling at her arms. So she sits down in the water that floods the floor. The yoki-suppressants kick in and, for the first time in years, she feels cold. She ignores the icy bite of water and thinks of something to motivate her.

In the syrupy dark of her prison, she hears a footstep. Something stirs in the dark.

* * *

  
Once, as she helped the women of the hill villages harvest olives, the black shadow walked up to her in the open daylight.

She ignored it as it snaked through the trees. Losing track of its presence, she was tempted to draw her Claymore. But the women around her laughed, and children played in shade. Men came and went, carrying off baskets of olives for the press. They smiled at her and teased her about a warrior plucking olives with such fine fingers. She chose not to alarm them.

But the black shadow didn’t go away. Soon, olives in Miria’s hands were slick with blood, and the scent of bruised olives stank worse than exposed flesh on a battlefield. Sure enough, the black shadow walked straight up to her. It strolled through the groves knifed with sunbeams, past the women and children and laid a hand on her shoulder.

So she left.

The black shadow pursued her. In the open rolling hills laden with falling olives, she had nowhere to run. So she went into the village’s olive press. She ignored the stares of the men at the press and entered the room filled with vats of oil. The aroma of the oxidising olives overpowered her for a moment, and she swooned, struggling for breath in this airless room.

When the door opened, she knew. It would all be over and the black shadow would be upon her. But instead, she saw Tabitha –

Tabitha, smiling, her face diffused with light. Tabitha, kneeling, taking her hand and helping up. Tabitha, who said to her, “Live for me, Miria.”

When she came to, the black shadow was gone. There was only her and the men at olive press asking if she was all right.

* * *

  
This is what she thinks as her body rebels against the pills. She’s cold and wet, and for the first time in a long time she can feel the wrinkles on her skin, ignited by prolonged exposure to this stale water. Soon, pain fires up her stomach, and she loses control of her muscles.

Still she thinks of Tabitha. How many times has she dreamt of her? At least twice since the last moon. How many times has she appeared to her? Too many to count. In her drug-induced headache, she tries to isolate thoughts slipping through the synapses of her mind –

The flush of crimson on Tabitha’s face as they spar in middle of winter. Their backs fitting into each’s others as they face a horde of Awakened Ones. The warmth of Tabitha’s blood as she cuts her before taking on the Organisation. The blood on Tabitha’s trembling lower lip as she kissed her for the last time –

Sleeping alone at night in her home amongst the sandy hills and olive trees. Her long, quiet walks patrolling the hills for yoma. Attending the weddings of the children that once played in the olive groves. Being received as the guest of honour at these weddings –

Yuma telling her, “Your imagination of Tabitha and this thing you call a shadow is likely your way of dealing with pain.”

Yuma saying: “You have to talk to us about it before something happens.”

Did she really believe what Yuma did would help? Part of her, defiant and kicking, thinks so. But another part just wants to lie down and sink into the muck of this darkness.* 

In the cloudy swamp of her own waste, Miria hears something settle down across from her.

* * *

  
Miria doesn’t remember how she became involved with Yuma. All she remembers is Yuma saved her life, once.

That morning, Miria took refuge in her bed after a sleepless night. As the sun rose, the black shadow crawled through her window and paused at her bedside. When Miria turned over, she saw Undine, gums bleeding and muscles trailing like streamers from her arms.

“You led us to die,” Undine said. “You left us to die in the north.”

“No. I didn’t. You know what.”

“You killed all of us, Phantom Miria.”

Before Miria could move, Undine straddled her and put her in a front headlock. The weight on her chest soon blossomed into pain, a downward pressure more deep than actually getting stabbed. As she struggled, Undine’s arms seemed to bloat, and her grip intensified. Miria could see the sunlight, then not, and then the sun again – as an unholy stench of decay began to infiltrate her senses.

So she thought she was dreaming when she heard a voice go, “Miria? You in there?”

The thing that resembled Undine on top of her turned its head. Its eyes dropped off. When the voice came again, it dismounted her and bled away into the floor. The pain on her chest remained even as Yuma poked her head into the room.

“Still in bed, Miria?”

She couldn’t speak. Gesturing to her chest helped Yuma learn that she was still hurting. In no time, Yuma had sat her upright and healed her with yoki. As she got out of bed and tore her room apart to find what had attacked her, she could see how confused Yuma was.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Miria said.

She told Yuma everything. She was the first warrior who knew. Up to the point she stabbed her, Miria thinks that a skilled healer and listener like Yuma coming by her home that day was nothing less than divine intervention.

* * *

  
Miria prepares for what she knows will come. In the dark static of her failing vision, she can make out the black shadow just beyond her reach. Long snout, white stubble, stained teeth and the cloying, pixie-like voice of Clarice.

“You killed us for your own goals.”

Miria closes her eyes and stops her ears to drown out of the voice she hasn’t heard in a long while. But when her eyes go dark, she sees Veronica’s head in the snow, Jean’s mouth frozen in a crimson sneer, Flora’s face peeling from its hinges and animals feasting from the shallow graves of fellow warriors.

“You used us all and threw us away.”

Three talking heads – Hilda, Hysteria, Rimuto – decomposing into ribbons in her hands, eyes dissolving into sludge.

“You betrayed us all.”

Yuma’s abdomen giving way as she struggled to free herself. And Tabitha’s smile succumbing to weeds and maggots.

Miria doesn’t fight it. She lets the black creature cradle her close, slip its arms around her arms and tug at her face. She’s never let it come so close without a fight. But right now, in this cold prison, this creature’s the only thing she has for company.

“Finally you understand.”

“Yes.”

“Die. Die with us.”

Miria feels her world falling. Her cheek hits the water. A force behind her head thrusts her face down into the swill. She tries to scream. She tries to fight. But there’s no yoki, there’s no oxygen. Her limbs wrestle with air. The black creature folds and breaks them like sticks.

The pain suffocates her senses, and soon there’s nothing left to breathe. Fluid rushes up her nose. Her limbs lose purchase. Her arms refuse to move. Everything shuts down.

Except the thrumming of background noise in her ears –

An echo getting louder and louder:

“Miria!”

Tabitha’s voice.

First, light. The pain decreases, the water stops flushing and the weight on her back fades. Later, air. Sweet, thick and pure.

I’m in heaven with you, she thinks.

But no, she still sees the grimy walls of the gaol, the mud-coloured water staining her hands. She’s being carried, and the light is so bright she cannot bear to keep her eyes open.

A voice sweeps over her, “You’re safe now.”

“Align her yoki with mine. Bring her back!.”

* * *

  
Miria knows why she did it, why she tried to kill Yuma. At the trial, facing a council of warriors all younger than her, being accused by a code she herself set into law, she tells them.

She remembers Yuma and her claim: “You feel guilty, you feel that you did something wrong and your yoki and mind is taking this to an extreme.”

She did not want to believe her, but Yuma had been the only one with whom she could talk with. Yuma knew the faces she saw in her nightmares, and she’d been through the hell that was Pieta. Most of all, Yuma had been there when Tabitha died her arms.

But Yuma also wanted her to do something unthinkable.

“Align your yoki with mine and let me try to heal your memory.”

“How?”

“I’ve tried this with some other warriors before,” Yuma had said. “I go deep, drag out the memories that cause fear and either they overcome them or I wipe them away.”

This was when she saw it. She had just closed her eyes and the first thing she saw when Yuma’s consciousness pricked hers was Tabitha. Dying all over again, but screaming and kicking her body into a pulpy mess of organs. She gripped her tight and said,

“You’re leaving me again.”

“No –”

“You’re killing me again. Leaving me to die. Forgetting me.”

“No –”

When Miria opened her eyes, the black creature stood in front of her, superimposed onto Yuma, reaching out to embrace her. It was robbing her of everything – of her will to live, her memory, and now even Tabitha – *

So she stabbed it, stabbed her and ran. Stabbed her and ran because she was too cowardly to move on from the death of the warrior who loved her.

This is what she tells this to the most senior warriors of the next generation after hers. She keeps her voice even and looks them in the eye. She knows they are uncomfortable with her testimony, but they keep quiet out of respect.

When she ends, two others give their versions of the story. Galatea, who saved her from drowning in the gaol, says she felt – no, saw – something else in the compound with Miria, attacking her. When she end, Miria looks Galatea, the only warrior more experienced than her, feeling a brief pulse of gratitude despite all their differences.

After Galatea, Yuma speaks. She’s still wounded and can’t stand without help. But she pleads for Miria’s case and tells everyone what she saw on that day when she was stabbed. All the while, she uses Miria’s shoulder to support herself. She holds Miria’s hand, and Miria grips it like it’s her only lifeline.

The senior warriors of the next generation – Audrey, Rachel, Anatasia and Raftela – confer among themselves. When they’ve decided, Raftela, her voice so soft Miria can barely hear her, delivers their verdict.

* * *

  
When Miria returns home, the first whispers of snow dust the empty olive groves. She meet several villagers. They’ve harvested her groves, kept her share and planted beets in her garden.

“You’ve brought along some friends to our humble village, yes?” they say, nodding at the company she brings.

Yuma and Raftela accompany her home. They go through every corner of the house, and Miria lets them monitor her emotions and thoughts. It unnerves her to feel two additional fulcrums in her consciousness. They revisit the spot where the stabbing took place, and there Miria feels a brief, reflex spike in Yuma’s yoki, but it’s over before she knows it.

A young girl from the neighbouring grove beyond the hill has maintained her home in her absence, but Miria still cleans it anyway. She dons the flax dresses that the men always teased her about wearing, and serves her guests bread and olives while they fulfil their duties. Yuma takes notes on everything in the house, while Raftela sweeps and controls their levels of yoki.

They take just over two hours, recording a visual memory of Miria’s home, letting her get accustomed to their presence. Before they leave, they take Miria’s hands and all three harmonise their yoki signatures. They infuse a cordial yoki signature into Miria’s complicated feelings of returning home stripped of her sword, uniform and authority.

“We’re done here,” Raftela says. Ever formal, she adds, “Thank you for the hospitality.”

“We’ll come by, every other day,” Yuma says.

“I’m being deployed, so you’ll be on your own,” Raftela says.

“Maybe Sister Latea or another of the stronger yoki manipulators will come by. But I’ll be here for sure.”

“Thanks for everything.”

“Do not forget to reach out to us if you feel afraid,” Raftela says.

“We’ll earn your sword back with you.”

As they leave in gentle snowfall, Miria watches white flecks gather on their shoulders. For a moment she sees the pale landscape before her, and the empty house behind her, with no one except her human neighbours for miles.

“Wait!” she says.

She sees Yuma and Raftela turn.

“Could someone –” Words lost in her throat, she thinks of the nights along with the black creature. She thinks of the wind blasting and knocking her shaking home. Things moving in the dark she cannot control.

“Could someone stay with me this first night?” she asks them. “Just once. I might need some help.”

She sees Yuma and Raftela look at each other. Yuma gives the other warrior a brief nod and returns toward the house. Yuma closes the distance, until Miria can see her bangs dancing in the wind. Beyond her, Raftela looks, turns and disappears into the snowfall.

* * *

  
Miria wakes in the middle of the night. She senses something outside in her garden, a presence separated by the walls of her house.

Beside her, Yuma sleeps. She breathes silently, eyes sealed, her warmth exhaled breath trickling onto Miria’s shoulders. Miria traces Yuma’s bare body, down her clavicle to her stomach where the folds of the wound she inflicted feel like a pressed flower. Reluctantly, she untangles herself from Yuma’s warm body, dons her clothes and goes outside.

She doesn’t have to walk far. At the entrance to the groves, Tabitha sits on the trunk of an olive tree. She’s narcissus-white in the glowing moonlight, her hair undone.

“You’re still here.”

“You thought I would ever leave you?”

Miria sits beside Tabitha, a presence so cold that she knows it has to be real. Can a memory etched in yoki be real?

All around the hills are silent, submerged under a cloak of fresh snow. Miria breathes in the stillness in the air.

“Stay with me?”

“Forever, Miria.”

Miria settles herself under the olive tree. She looks out over the frozen land, watching the sliding waves of mist over the horizon. She waits and watches that line between earth and sky, a separation of two planes, where dawn will surely break.

 

 _END_  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this story. If it isn't clear from what you've read, this story is about PTSD and survivor's guilt.
> 
> I have no experience with either, so this story was extremely difficult to write. But the idea came to me when I read a series of books on post-war experiences: 'The Corpse Exhibition' by Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim, 'Be Safe I Love You' by Cara Hoffman and the amazing memoir 'Demon Camp' by Jennifer Percy. All in some way deal with the effects of war on combatants. So I decided to write about the aftermath of centuries of warfare on Claymore characters. I cannot imagine how, to a character like Miria who survived so much crap in the canon, how it must feel to lose so many good friends (Hilda & Tabitha among them).
> 
> This fic is unbeta-ed, so there may be some errors here and there.
> 
> To any potential reviewers, please help me to improve by answering these questions: (1) How do you feel about this portrayal of Miria's character? (2) Did I lose you anywhere in this story? If yes, when? & (3) Do you feel that the resolution came too fast?


End file.
